Mean Sisters

by Lindsay Emory

Mabel Donahue was there and she presented the crowd with a stirring oration, invoking the Delta Beta creed and also Liza’s love of TV shows like Gray’s Anatomy. Several quotations from that show really made us all think.

  The chapel was packed to the rafters, filled with people who had come from far and near. The whole Sutton Chapter took up the first five rows and I was proud of their appropriate shoes and solemn facial expressions. When I first entered the chapel, I had caught a glimpse of Ty Hatfield sitting in the back row, no doubt taking notes and keeping a sharp eye out for Stefanie Grossman. If I were a murderer, I wasn’t sure I’d come to my victim’s memorial service filled with all my friends, but a thousand cop shows couldn’t be wrong.

  Amanda was there, too, as was Dean Xavier. Curiously, they didn’t sit together. I guessed they didn’t want to go public with their relationship yet, due to some sort of Sutton College regulations about employees dating. Hunter, the house brother, was barely recognizable in a jacket and tie, sitting just behind the chapter. I thought that was sweet, like he took his ‘little brother’ status seriously. He also probably knew Liza pretty well, since her office was right around the corner from the kitchen.

  After a very long, dreary hymn about heaven or something, the chapter chaplain, a thin, red-headed girl with bright pink lipstick stood up, piously closed her eyes, clasped her hands and lifted her face to the ceiling to lead the gathering in prayer.

  ‘Dear Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, we thank you today for bright sunshine, good, good friends and the life of Liza Jean McCarthy. She was a special flower that grew for a summer, before she was accidentally whacked by Satan, the undocumented gardener of Hell. Please let her know that we are thinking about her and hope she has lots of fun in Heaven, with you. We ask that you keep our friends close and our enemies closer. In your name we pray, AMEN.’

  The attendees murmured their Amens and I wondered what Ty Hatfield thought about the ‘enemies’ bit of the prayer. If he arrested the Delta Beta chaplain for that, I was seriously going to object.

  Next came the interpretive dance, which would have been cheesy, but the hidden symbolism behind their reenactment of the chapter meeting ritual was too evocative to ignore, especially at the end, when the dancer in black flung herself off the rear of the stage. I saw Mabel Donahue’s shoulders shaking, so I assumed even she was deeply affected. It wasn’t something she saw everyday stuck in an office at headquarters.

  When a trio of sisters slowly walked to the stage and began singing Delta Beta’s ‘Ode to Service’ in perfect three part harmony, while Asha Patel accompanied them on the violin, that’s when I lost it. And when I lost it, it was contagious. I heard sniffles spread around the chapel, then little sobs, then the bawling that echoed my own.

  Any Deb would do the same. The song is really, really meaningful. They reached the final verse: ‘To our sisters, here and gone, our friends, true and long, we vow our oath most fervent, that you deserve our service.’

  It brought down the house. Hunter stood to give a standing ovation and quickly sat down when I gave him a sharp little nod. That was taking it a bit too far. This wasn’t a Taylor Swift concert. This was a funeral, for Pete’s sake. Have some decorum.

  After the service, Casey had arranged a reception at the sorority house, so he and Mabel left together in her Cadillac, leaving me to find Ty Hatfield and see if he meant what he said about a ride to the station.

  ‘You ready?’ Ty asked me and I tried to ignore the note of concern in his voice. I still wanted to be mad at him for withholding information.

  ‘Is anyone ready for this?’ I lifted my hands to the decorated chapel. It was a little rhetorical, but I had been a philosophy major.

  It seemed he wanted to discuss something else though. ‘I just thought you might want to change.’

  I looked down at my LBD. It was Calvin Klein and appropriate for both a funeral and a police station, not that I’d actually ever had the occasion to wear an outfit to those two destinations on the same day before. ‘No,’ I said shortly. ‘Unless you’re going to throw me in a cell again.’

  He had the decency to look embarrassed by that. ‘Okay. My car’s out front.’

  We walked out of the chapel doors and I paused when I saw the cruiser. ‘I get to sit in front, right?’ I asked just to make sure. Also, Calvin Klein did not belong in the back of a police car.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  On Law & Order, statements were usually given in a bleak, gray interrogation room, with a two-way mirror, where officers could drink coffee and speculate on the suspects’ motives outside of the perp’s hearing. Not at the Sutton police station. No, we were back in Ty’s office, which, while bleak, did not have a two-way mirror, as far as I could see. And there wasn’t anyone playing good cop to Ty’s bad cop. There was just Ty, who, if I had to be honest, had the personality traits of both a good cop and a bad cop. I wasn’t sure which version of Ty Hatfield I preferred. Both sides scared me a little.

  He turned on a tape recorder and asked me questions about Stefanie Grossman. I felt guilty even answering since I’d never met her, but I answered honestly.

  Then he turned the recorder off and that was that. But when has that ever been that when Ty Hatfield was in the room with me?

  ‘How did you know about the envelope?’ he asked. I double checked to make sure the recorder was off and he saw me doing it.

  ‘What envelope?’ I said it to be a pain. Give him a taste of his own medicine.

  Ty had the patience of a really cute saint. ‘How did you know we received an envelope?’

  ‘I guessed.’ I met his eyes in challenge. He couldn’t make me say more because it was true. I had guessed.

  ‘You guessed.’

  I examined my French manicure that I’d gotten before I came to Sutton. It was already ragged. The white tips were chipped from re-cleaning and organising Liza’s office a half-dozen times. ‘Lots of people use white envelopes. Probably a large majority of the envelope-using population, if I had to guess.’

  Ty leaned back in his chair and linked his hands behind his head, his elbows sticking out like pennants. ‘Why do you keep secrets from me, Margot Blythe?’

  I couldn’t help the incredulous laugh that burst out. ‘I could ask the same of you!’

  ‘Where’s Stefanie?’ His flat question showed he really thought I knew.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Who does?’ The question was a command really and it irked me. Some politeness wouldn’t be out of the question.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said again. I cocked my head. ‘Aren’t you asking other people, getting their statements? Or do you just like talking to me?’

  ‘Yes.’ The single curt word caught me off guard. His eyes held me for a long moment before I recovered.

  I picked up a baseball off his desk and twirled it in my fingers, before I wrapped two fingers around it, like an old boyfriend had taught me. ‘Don’t the police have ways to track people? Like GPS and credit cards and cell phones?’

  Ty’s jaw clamped tightly as he dropped his arms and sat up straight again. ‘Her parents swear they haven’t heard from her, although we’ve got Nashville PD watching the house. There’s been no activity on her cell phone or her cards. No one’s seen her. She’s just disappeared.’

  I put the baseball back on his desk. ‘On Law & Order, that usually means something really shady has gone down.’

  Ty looked like he shared that feeling. He reached for the baseball and tossed it into the air. Something he’d said earlier had reminded me.

  ‘What about the phone logs?’

  Ty caught the ball and stared. ‘What phone logs?’

  ‘The phone sex line. If Stefanie was one of the operators, maybe she had another phone, a disposable one and you could trace that.’

  He shook his head. ‘We already got the records for the phone sex number. It looks like all the operators used burners. We can’t get a warrant to search all those records, that’s not a close e
nough connection between the suspect and the warrant.’

  I thought the government did stuff like all the time. Apparently Ty Hatfield was one of the good guys in that regard.

  ‘How many were there?’

  Ty stopped tossing the ball at my question. ‘Margot …’ he drew my name out.

  ‘Just tell me,’ I sighed, brushing my bangs out of my eyes and behind my ear.

  His eyes focused on that ear before he answered, reluctantly. ‘At least ten separate operators, from what we can see. Of course, it could be fewer, if someone changed numbers. But we have no way of knowing.’

  I remembered what Casey had told me, about being forthcoming with the police. ‘There might be a way.’ Then I told him that what I’d identified as the chapter financials weren’t for the chapter at all, that they didn’t match up to the paperwork from Headquarters. I told him my theory that they were phone records for Liza’s phone sex business. At some point, Ty started jotting down notes. He didn’t turn on his recorder though and I felt overly indebted to him for that.

  I paused for a moment, then decided to reveal everything. I described the address book, the numbers and letters and the codes.

  ‘And where is this book?’ Ty was still writing. When I didn’t answer immediately, he looked up at me, those blue eyes seeming to know that I was leaving something out.

  I closed my eyes and rushed the explanation. ‘It’s gone.’

  ‘GONE!?’ The pen fell to the desk.

  I lifted my hands helplessly. ‘It was there, in my pants when I went to chapter. When I came back, Casey was there and my pants …’

  ‘Were gone?’ I snapped my gaze at him. I didn’t appreciate the implication that Casey had something to do with my missing pants. They weren’t even his size.

  ‘The book was gone,’ I said archly. ‘My pants were fine. Thanks for asking.’

  ‘Where did the book go?’ Ty asked deliberately.

  ‘How the heck do I know? I looked everywhere. I even went back to the office in case I’d left it there.’ Oh yeah. I had something else to tell him that he wouldn’t like. ‘And the office was a mess again.’

  Now it was his turn to close his eyes. His mouth opened and closed like he had just lost the ability to speak.

  ‘But it was just a mess. Not like someone ransacked it.’

  Ty flashed his blue eyes open. ‘And you can tell the difference how?’

  I lifted my shoulders. For nine months of the year, I virtually lived in any number of sorority houses. I can tell the difference between types of messes.

  ‘Was anything else missing?’ Ty seemed out of sorts.

  I shook my head. Just the address book. With my luck, that darned book was probably the only way any of this was going to make sense.

  Just then, Ty got a call on his phone. With an irritated look at me, he picked it up. His frown only got deeper the longer he listened to whatever he heard. He said thanks and ‘keep me updated’ with a gruff voice, then hung up.

  ‘You didn’t say goodbye,’ I observed. Manners were important to me.

  I became the recipient of another irritated scowl from Ty Hatfield. ‘What the hell is going on, Margot?’

  ‘What?’ I squealed. ‘What did I do?’

  ‘That was campus police on the line. Someone broke into Professor Xavier’s office.’

  ‘Dean Xavier?’

  ‘I think he’s just a professor.’

  I leaned back and the realization hit me. ‘Someone’s looking for something.’

  He grabbed the baseball again, his jaw tight, his grip tighter. ‘I swear to God, Margot, tell me what you know.’

  ‘This isn’t Stefanie,’ I managed to say, deep in thought.

  ‘What?’ Now Ty looked furious. ‘What do you know?’

  I shook my head as pieces clicked into place. ‘How could this be Stefanie? She’s in hiding. No one’s seen her for days. But she’s waltzing in and out of the sociology building and the sorority house, ransacking offices? With no one seeing her? It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘What is someone looking for at Xavier’s office?’ It wasn’t so much of a question as it was a demand. Again. That was fine. At this point, there was no reason not to share this information.

  ‘Last Friday, I paid Dean Xavier a visit and gave him a whole stack of papers that belonged to Liza McCarthy.’ I paused, watching as Ty processed that. ‘Someone wants something that Liza had. They looked in the office, they looked in my apartment and then they looked in Xavier’s office.’

  ‘Who knew you took Liza’s stuff to Xavier’s?’

  It was a very short list.

  Before I could go over that list, there was a commotion in the front of the station. A commotion that could only come from one person.

  Ty muttered curses under his breath and pointed at me. ‘You, stay here.’

  When had I ever listened to Ty Hatfield? I jumped up and followed him, of course, because I had to see the show.

  At the front desk of the station it was no longer quiet, no longer boring. My best friend Casey Kenner was yelling at the top of his lungs. ‘HELLO?! Is anyone in this godforsaken town going to answer me?’ Behind Casey Kenner was Mabel Donahue, the Vice-President of Collegiate Chapters for Delta Beta Sorority, Incorporated.

  I could only see Ty from behind, which was enjoyable in itself, but I was sure the expression on his face was priceless, because his shoulders jerked back and his whole posture took on an ‘I’m the sheriff, I’m in charge’ kind of vibe. Like I said, it was enjoyable from the back.

  ‘Are you the detective in charge of the Liza McCarthy case?’ Casey asked imperiously at Ty, his voice carrying like the inveterate showman he was.

  ‘Yes.’ And that was the taciturn, slightly grumpy policeman.

  With a flourish that was worthy of a dramatic telenovela, Casey whipped out a piece of paper and presented it to Ty. ‘This is a subpoena duces tecum. You are hereby ordered to present property that is currently in your possession and is the legal property of Delta Beta Sorority, Incorporated, ad nauseum.’

  Ty barely glanced at the paper. I wondered if I could scooch around the side to get a better look of the drama. But if I moved, I wouldn’t have such a good view of Casey and he really was the star of this show. I couldn’t wait to see what happened next.

  ‘What property is that?’ Ty asked with a dry, lazy voice. It was almost like he didn’t appreciate Casey’s flair.

  ‘The aforementioned property legally consists of one cell phone belonging to Liza McCarthy. It’s spelled out, habeas corpus.’

  In case you couldn’t tell, Casey spent some time in law school.

  Ty looked at Mabel. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Mabel Donahue,’ she tilted her head like a queen. ‘Legal representative of Delta Beta Sorority.’

  ‘Incorporated,’ Casey added.

  ‘If I say no?’ Ty asked.

  With a smile and another quick hand job, Casey whipped out his cell phone. ‘The Delta Beta attorney was hoping you’d say that. She so wants to earn that retainer.’

  Ty looked at Casey and Mabel for another second, then half turned to look at me. I motioned that I had no idea what was going on. This was just another of Casey’s brilliant ideas. Ty made a sound of resignation, but before he could go get Liza’s phone out of evidence, another person walked through the front door of the police station, making this place more and more exciting every second.

  Except, this was one person I didn’t want to see, at least not like this. It was Amanda, with a black eye and a bloodied, swollen lip. I called her name and ran to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and walking her in.

  ‘What happened?’ I cried, filled with worry and sudden anger.

  Amanda looked at Ty. ‘I found Stefanie Grossman.’

  Ty immediately took Amanda into an interview room and allowed me in there for some reason. I guessed he knew that Amanda and I were friends by the way I immediately went into protective mode, getting her wate
r and tissues and staying close to her, holding her hand.

  Ty took out the recorder and set it on the table. I felt Amanda flinch, but I patted her back and told her not to worry. Ty wasn’t that scary.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ Ty asked.

  Amanda took a drink of water. ‘I was walking into my apartment, coming back from the memorial service and reception for Liza McCarthy. Stefanie was outside my building. She … she said I was the one who reported her behaviour to her sorority.’ Amanda’s eyes welled up as she looked at me. ‘I’m so sorry, Margot.’

  ‘Shhh …’ I squeezed her hand. ‘I know all this already. It was in her paperwork. You did what you had to.’

  ‘What behaviour?’ Ty asked.

  Amanda described what had happened in the bathroom at the football game. ‘Of course, I knew the Delta Beta standards code. I had a Panhellenic duty to report it to her Chapter Advisor.’ I nodded in support, so Ty could see that was completely the procedure.

  ‘So she said that’s why she was there?’ Ty prompted Amanda, his face almost blank. Whatever he thought about our archaic moral code, he wasn’t letting it show today.

  Amanda nodded, flinching at the memory. ‘She said she was tired of people like me ruining her life. And that’s when she hit me.’ Amanda lifted a shaky hand to her eye. ‘And shoved me into the wall of the building.’

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘To be honest, I think I blacked out a little. She was just suddenly gone. And I decided to come here and report it.’

  Ty raised his eyebrows a little. ‘You’re very resilient if you could drive after that.’

  Amanda shrugged. ‘It was a short drive. I don’t think my adrenaline has faded yet.’

  ‘Can I take you to the hospital?’ I asked gently.

  ‘She needs to stay here,’ Ty interrupted with an edge to his voice. ‘I’m not done yet.’

  ‘But she’s obviously hurting,’ I protested. I was going to stand up for my friend if she wasn’t strong enough to do it herself.

  ‘I’m fine.’ Now it was Amanda’s turn to squeeze my hand.

  I looked up and Ty was watching me like he was an eagle and I was a cute little baby bunny. ‘You’re free to go, Ms Blythe.’